| By Gale Staff |
Art bridges the gap between our inner selves and the outside world, helping us better understand the emotions we struggle to articulate while revealing a shared humanity in even our most isolating experiences.
In the hands of black women, artistic creation also carries a unique power to confront systemic oppression—including within an arts industry that has historically marginalized women and people of color. They are unyielding innovators, unapologetically claiming their spaces and asserting their right to honor their heritage, confront injustice, and celebrate their communities.
Across every classroom, it is certain that there will be learners who uncover something intimately familiar in these artists’ works, and who discover validation in perspectives that reflect their own lives. Others will discover pieces of themselves in unexpected places, finding common ground and familiar emotions from fresh eyes.
These works prove that a shared humanity connects us all.
In addition to Black History Month, February also hosts International Week of Black Women in the Arts from February 7–15. Use Gale In Context: Biography, an educator-vetted collection of more than 600,000 biographical entries, to spark curiosity and fuel the pursuit of knowledge through in-depth profiles, photos, videos, audio files, and primary sources. Consider starting with this selection sourced from Gale In Context: Biography to streamline your lesson planning with engaging, ready-to-use research materials.
Carrie Mae Weems
“Art allows us to navigate the more complicated parts of our lives in a way that is more palpable.”
Through photography, textiles, text, and video, MacArthur Genius Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953) uses images as visual rhetoric that comments on the connections between identity and social hierarchies. Her work frequently features spaces where personal and collective histories intersect, particularly within black families.
In Weems’ Kitchen Table Series, that space is the titular kitchen table, where she captures intimate scenes that demonstrate the complex social roles of black women. In one image, she straightens her daughter’s hair, an act that is specifically familiar to many black women—but one that remains open to any parent who can relate to the obvious care and connection. Through these everyday moments, Weems engages with the idea of overlapping identities and how our sociopolitical realities shape them.
Esther Rolle
“I ruffle a lot of feathers. And I’m also selective—that makes you a troublemaker. But so be it. I laid a cornerstone for black actors, and that makes me happy.”
At a time when black characters were often reduced to stereotypes on television, Emmy Award–winner Esther Rolle (1920–98) became a force for authentic representation. In her breakthrough role as Florida Evans on Maude, Rolle brought depth to the Hollywood portrayal of the black domestic worker. Instead of perpetuating the trope Rolle described as “that hee-hee/grin-grin attitude,” Maude positioned Florida as a woman of equal standing whose wisdom and integrity often balanced that of the title character.
This role led to Florida getting her own highly successful spin-off show, Good Times, where Rolle used her platform to fight back against how black family life had been depicted in the past. She demanded that on-screen relationships show black families in their multifaceted authenticity, and called for producers to add a father to the show—John Amos was later cast—because “[she] couldn’t compound the lie that black fathers don’t care about their children.”
Alice Walker
“I don’t like writers who don’t care. I think writers should care desperately.”
For Alice Walker (b. 1944), novelist, poet, and self-described “womanist,” or feminist of color, art is both a refuge and a revolutionary act. Her writing conveys her belief in the creative spirit as a survival mechanism that black women grasp onto when the world’s ugliness feels too heavy to bear—a way to have a voice even through times of silence.
In Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple, we see Celie penning letters to her sister Nettie for years, despite Celie’s husband intercepting and hiding away Nettie’s responses. In A Sudden Trip Home in the Spring, the protagonist, Sarah, an art student, resolves to do her grandfather’s face “up in stone” after a trip home for her father’s funeral brings up old traumas. In both cases (and countless others from her writing), Walker illustrates how essential a creative outlet is for black women to make it through life’s most devastating moments.
Josephine Baker
“A violinist had a violin, a painter his palette. All I had was myself. I was the instrument that I must care for.”
After spending the first 19 years of her life in St. Louis, Missouri, Josephine Baker (1906–75) “realized [she] was living in a country where [she] was afraid to be black.” So, like James Baldwin two decades later, she left America to find liberation in Paris.
There, she became a highly in-demand entertainer, combining dance and comedy in performances that challenged the expectations of the time. For example, her famous banana skirt dance saw Baker challenging the world’s gaze and using it to reclaim control over the exoticism imposed on black bodies.
That same self-determinist attitude compelled her to join the French Resistance during WWII, risking her life to smuggle messages for the Allies hidden in her sheet music and costumes. Upon her return to the U.S., her sense of activism remained just as staunch, becoming a force of nature in the Civil Rights Movement, and standing beside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Even in death, Baker continued to defy expectations, when 45 years after her death, she became the first black woman inducted into Paris’ Panthéon, a tomb reserved for the country’s most highly-regarded heroes.
Kara Walker
“I do what I am feeling and what I’m feeling is monstrous. And I do it in the nicest possible way.”
Working in paper sculptures and watercolor paintings, Kara Walker (b. 1969) confronts the dark undercurrents of American history, forcing audiences to face the brutal realities of racism. Her art style—primarily comprised of cartoonish, exaggerated faces reminiscent of 19th-century caricatures and silhouettes—reclaims two formats historically used to objectify and dehumanize black people.
One of her most memorable pieces, “A Subtlety,” was an enormous, sugar-coated sculpture of a black woman’s head and torso, styled like a Sphinx, set within the halls of a former Domino Sugar factory. Walker’s piece evoked the exploitation of enslaved workers in the sugar industry, confronting viewers with the sweetened veneer of racial commodification. As “A Subtlety” shows, Walker’s goal as an artist is to hold up a mirror to the audience and urge them to grapple with the “monstrous” facts of America’s history.
Katherine Dunham
“A creative person has to create. It doesn’t really matter what you create . . . but something that is creative has to go on.”
When Katherine Dunham (1909–2006) took her first ballet class at 18, it became the catalyst for her to combine her love of dance with her passion for cultural preservation through visual storytelling. In the 1930s, Dunham traveled to the Caribbean, where she immersed herself in the culture and dances of Haiti, Jamaica, and several other islands.
She used these experiences to develop the Dunham Technique. This revolutionary style juxtaposed the Caribbean’s grounded, expressive movements with the rigid control of classical ballet, insisting that both equally deserve to be called “high art.” With performances like Tropical Revue and Caribbean Rhapsody, Dunham cemented herself as a world-renowned choreographer and challenged the Eurocentric foundations of dance as an art form, which had long prioritized Western forms and aesthetics.
Help Aspiring Artists Find Their Inspiration With Gale In Context: Biography
Creativity is a way of saying something out loud when it feels like no one is listening. Bringing these women’s stories into the classroom reminds students that their voices matter and that expressing themselves—whether through writing, singing, dancing, painting, sculpting, or acting—is an act of self-affirmation.
With its rich collection of multimedia resources, Gale In Context: Biography gives your students access to hundreds of thousands of stories, reflecting diverse identities and experiences so every learner can find someone who resonates with them.
Contact your local sales representative to learn more about the Gale In Context: Biography and other databases available through the Gale In Context suite.